


Effacement

by Wish_I_Had_A_Tail



Category: X-23 (Comic), X-Men (Comicverse), X-Men - All Media Types
Genre: Canon divergence - Sarah Kinney Lives, Canonical Child Abuse, Comic Book Science, Dehumanization, Family Dynamics, Gen, Human Experimentation, Mutant Politics, Mutant Rights, On the Run, Parent-Child Relationship, Sarah Kinney is Canadian, Sarah Kinney's A+ Parenting, comic timelines are... flexible, kind of, some actual science, tags will be updated as story progresses, the facility, toxic parenting
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-18
Updated: 2021-01-07
Packaged: 2021-03-07 18:21:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 14,937
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26532037
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wish_I_Had_A_Tail/pseuds/Wish_I_Had_A_Tail
Summary: Sarah Kinney has never exactly been a good person. X-23 has not had the chance to be a person at all.We do not get to choose our family.Sarah Kinney lives AU.
Relationships: Laura Kinney & Logan, Laura Kinney & Sarah Kinney, Laura Kinney & Sarah Kinney & Logan, Logan (X-Men) & Kurt Wagner
Comments: 26
Kudos: 31





	1. Innocence Lost

_Effacement_ (n)

ef·face·ment | \ i-ˈfās-mənt , e- \

Definition

1: reduction to insignificance

2 : _(medical)_ the shortening and thinning of the uterine cervix during labor so that only the external orifice remains

***

Sarah is waiting for time to run out.

Nine seconds, then eight. Seven. She bites her lip and tastes blood. Her eyes are glued to the building in front of her – she can see red lights flashing in the few windows that are not tinted dark.

Every time another eternity passes, she glances at the stopwatch to find it has only been a second or two. The doors do not budge. She can hear the faint, muffled sound of alarms blaring within. Four seconds left now. Sarah stares openly at the chaos.

Her hands are gripping her bag so tightly her fingers start to ache. She is standing a few feet from the front of the Facility. Her car is right beside her, engine running, doors open to save time. She hears an explosion. It isn’t the first, but it is the loudest so far. The air filter on the roof begins to billow black smoke. She wonders how long until everyone inside is dead. When the front doors finally open, more smoke pours out, thick and urgent like the building is vomiting.

X-23’s silhouette is tiny in the chaos. She is haloed in fire.

“Thank God,” Sarah breathes. X-23 approaches her unhurriedly, ash crunching beneath her boots like snow. Her claws sink abruptly back into her arms. When she comes close, Sarah can see that she is flecked with blood. She looks up at her and says nothing. Sarah’s eyes fill with tears – if she tries to speak, she will weep with relief.

X-23 holds out a hand. The gesture takes Sarah by surprise, and her eyes spill over as she reaches out to take it. But before she makes contact, the little hand opens. The watch is resting in her palm. It counts down to zero as the alarms come to a crescendo.

Sarah takes it.

“Let’s go,” she says. X-23 follows her into the car, climbs obediently into the back seat and shuts the door. Sarah’s arm dangles out the open window. She clicks her seatbelt into place. Both of them peer into the rear-view mirror for a last glance at the carcass of the building. Sarah lingers on the front doors, waiting for a survivor to burst through them. No one does.

She lets both watches fall from her hand as she drives away.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter 2 will be posted relatively soon! Chapter 3 not as soon lol
> 
> Please comment if you enjoy :)


	2. Nature

They drive in anxious silence for long minutes. Sarah’s route is intentionally meandering; she gets onto roads that are out of the way or go the wrong direction, leaves them minutes later, alternates massive freeways with tiny unpaved country paths. It is a route made to throw people off their trail. As they drive, X-23’s eyes flit between the car’s mirrors. Assessing. Surveilling. It sets Sarah’s teeth on edge.

“Well? Is anyone following us?” Sarah asks when she can’t take it anymore.

“No.”

“Are you sure?” she presses.

X-23 hesitates. She sits up onto her knees and turns her entire body around in the back seat, a 360° assessment of their surroundings. The slow rotation makes the leather squeak underneath her. X-23 finishes her sweep, then sits back, silent.

“Yes.”

Sarah takes a full breath for the first time in almost an hour. “Okay,” she says softly. Then again, “Okay.” Her fingers loosen their death-grip on the steering wheel, chalk-white skin abruptly allowed to fill back up with blood. The sun begins to go down around them.

It occurs to Sarah that she has not actually said where they are going.

“I have a house ready for us,” she tells X-23. “It’s maybe another three hours drive. Maybe a bit more. We have to cross the border first.” Green eyes watch her intently through the mirror. Sarah focuses determinedly on the road. “We’re never going back to the Facility again, okay? Never,” she says firmly. “They won’t ever find us.”

A low rumble comes from the back of X-23’s throat. “Kimura will,” she growls. It is the most she has said since they left the Facility, the first time she has spoken unprompted.

Fear shoots up Sarah’s spine like a flash of lightning. “I know.” The road they are on now is poorly lit and narrow, and curves sharply without warning. There are densely packed trees on either side, dark masses of leaves obscuring every road sign they pass almost entirely. X-23 cracks open the window and breathes the forest in.

The car fills with the scent of pine and petrichor. Sarah’s stomach rumbles, and she becomes aware of her own hunger all at once. She checks the time and clucks her tongue. X-23 should have been fed hours ago. “Are you hungry?” she asks anyway.

“ _Yes._ ”

Sarah looks up to meet her eyes in the mirror. X-23 has one hand resting on her stomach, her mouth curved down with discomfort. Hunger is not something she experiences often.

“We’ll stop somewhere once we’re back on a real road,” Sarah promises. She fishes a bag out of the glove compartment and tosses it into the back seat. “Here, change into those,” she says. “Then… I guess toss your uniform out the window.”

X-23 strips down and folds her uniform up into a compact roll. Then, cramped in the back seat, she wrestles herself into the clothes Sarah has given her. The shirt is loose, the sleeves of what should be a t-shirt falling just below her elbows. Sarah sees her fussing with the hems of the jeans. She folds them several times over.

“They okay?” she asks. X-23 looks up at her. Her face clouds over.

“Too long,” she murmurs. She finishes rolling up the fabric in silence, then holds her rolled up uniform up to the window. X-23 pauses. There is a concerted expression on her face, like she is working herself up to something.

“What?” Sarah prompts. “Tell me what you’re thinking.” X-23 looks up at her with her wary eyes.

“This uniform can be used to trace us,” she says finally.

“Okay. You’re saying we shouldn’t toss it?”

X-23 swallows audibly. She looks as if every word takes physical effort to push past her throat. She spits out, “Burning is a more secure way to dispose of it.”

Sarah considers this. “Okay,” she says. “We can do that when we get to the house.”

X-23 sets the folded up uniform under her seat and sits silently until Sarah takes an exit and pulls into the first fast food stop off the road. They’re far south enough that it’s a chain Sarah doesn’t recognize. X-23’s feet slide around in the ill-fitting shoes. She takes odd, unsteady steps when she gets out of the car.

When they enter the restaurant, X-23 beelines off to the side. Sarah startles. She nearly jogs to X-23’s side to catch her arm, suddenly terrified.

“What’s wrong?” She is back up to full alert. “Where are you going?”

X-23 blinks at her. “To the toilet.”

Her gaze goes to Sarah’s hand on her arm.

“Oh.” Embarrassment blooms on Sarah’s face. She lets go abruptly, then gestures awkwardly back behind her to the counter. “I’ll order for you, what do you want?”

“Item two on the menu,” X-23 says automatically. She takes a few seconds to pry her eyes away from the spot on her bicep where Sarah’s hand had been. Then she turns back around and closes the door carefully behind her in the single-person room.

***

“Listen,” Sarah says around a mouthful of burger. “You’re the expert here.” They are eating in the car, wrappers and plastic bags thrown onto the dashboard. Sarah is halfway through her burger; X-23 wolfed down her own meal at her usual astonishing pace, and is now working on Sarah’s fries. “I don’t know anything about this kind of stuff. If you think I’m doing something wrong, stop me. Tell me. Okay?”

X-23 takes a moment to process the instruction. Sarah tries to look encouraging. Disobedience has been punished X-23’s whole life; it must feel like a trap, being told to disagree.

Finally, X-23 nods her assent. She swallows a fry. “How far is the safehouse?” she asks.

“Like, three hours maybe.”

X-23 shoves another handful into her mouth, and for a moment her cheeks are chipmunk-big. She eats like she is racing against a clock. Sarah knows, intellectually, that it is only a consequence of her training, that she eats this way even when there is no reason to rush. But still, it makes her anxious, like she is the one holding them up. She takes guilty larger bites.

“Kimura will find us within the week,” X-23 says once she’s swallowed.

“Right,” Sarah says with no inflection at all. She is trying not to imagine the ways that Kimura might kill her. It is not a question of _if_ , if they are caught. It is a question of _how_ and _over how much time._ “What’s the earliest, do you think?” she asks with forced calm. “What’s the minimum amount of time we have to prepare?”

X-23 considers the question. “Two days.”

Unsurprising. Sarah feels the hair on her arms go up anyway. “Okay,” she says, trying to compartmentalize. “Is there anything else that we should do today? Besides get to the house?”

“No.” X-23 looks relieved the moment she says it.

“Great,” Sarah sighs. She collects all their garbage and shoves it into the door’s side pocket. Then she puts her key into the ignition. Unprompted, X-23 climbs into the back seat. Sarah eases the car back onto the road. “You can sit in the front if you want,” she starts to say, but X-23 is already asleep.

***

The safe house is more of a cottage. Wood panelled exterior, fire pit and deck chairs in the front yard, dense looming trees on all sides. When it was sold, it boasted a wood stove in the basement capable of heating the whole building. Sarah had it taken out to make room for her modifications. The cottage is not small, but it is smaller than Sarah could theoretically afford; much of its size has been traded for privacy. It stands in a neighbourhood of homes owned by people wealthy enough to buy as much seclusion as they are allowed. The driveway itself spans half a mile. Sarah drives down it and wonders whether to slow down to let X-23 sleep a moment longer.

When Sarah peers back into the mirror, however, she sees there is no need. X-23 is awake in the back seat, staring upwards at the stars between the trees.

“Sleep well?” she asks.

“Yes,” X-23 answers, but her voice is hoarse and tired. She rubs her eyes.

“This is it,” Sarah announces. The motion detector lights glare on when they come close enough, and she flinches away. Sarah turns off the engine. She twists back to look at X-23 face-to-face. “Let’s go inside.”

They take Sarah’s bags out of the trunk and head up. A few stairs take them up onto a hillock, and then they climb onto the cottage porch. Sarah unlocks the door and lets them in. She flips on the lights. X-23 looks around with that same intense surveillance.

“Okay,” Sarah says, and starts pointing at rooms. “Kitchen, bathroom, my room, your room. There are couches over there, you can see. Deck goes all the way around, but you can only get in through the front door. It locks automatically when you close it – 236523 is the code. There’s roof access through the closet in your room – there’s a little trapdoor in the ceiling which also locks automatically. That one is 866800. Stairs over here go to the basement – there’s another bathroom there, shower and everything. The panic room is in there –” at that, she sees a spark of interest in X-23’s eyes, “– I’ll show it to you tomorrow.”

She lets her arms, which have been gesturing animatedly around, fall limp at her sides. She is suddenly aimless. A moment without purpose, and she feels her exhaustion peek over the edge of her brain and wait for permission.

“Anything we need to do before we go to sleep?” Sarah asks.

X-23 shakes her head. Permission granted, Sarah takes in a breath and when she exhales it is as if her entire body deflates.

“Thank fuck,” she says. She rubs a hand over her eyes, and X-23 is already heading to the room she had indicated was hers. “Wait,” Sarah blurts out on a tired impulse. X-23 turns around and looks at her. Hesitantly, she asks. “What do you think? Of the house?”

There is a pause. She can see X-23’s mind working behind the flat green eyes, the way it does when she is trying to suss out what it being asked of her.

“It will be difficult to track us here,” she says finally. Sarah waits.

“Anything else?” she prods. X-23’s eyes are wide. “Do you like it?”

There is a look that wafts across X-23’s face that Sarah recognizes but cannot place. Something she sees often enough that it is hard to disassociate from her neutral expression. She nods, without conviction.

Sarah lets out a soft sigh. “Okay. Good.” She yawns so wide it strains her jaw. “Good night.”

X-23 heads to her room. Sarah summons the strength to brush her teeth, then walks, eyes half-closed and feeling her way along the wall, to her own bedroom. She passes X-23’s on her way and absently shuts the door. Sarah is asleep the moment her head hits her pillow. She dreams of long, narrow hallways that come to an abrupt end.

***

It is the threat of her alarm that wakes her.

Sarah comes to with a jolt of panic that any moment the loud blare will startle her out of bed. With sleepy, fumbling fingers, she turns off the alarm that is set to go off in ten minutes time. She does not have a blissful moment before she remembers her circumstances. She gets out of bed seconds after opening her eyes.

The house is silent. The sun is not yet up — Sarah flips on the hallway lights. By the time that she has showered, dressed, and taken a paranoid glance through every – tinted – window, X-23’s door is still shut. Sarah checks the time, notes that she should have woken up by now, and opens it. She is met with the sight of X-23 already awake and sitting up on her bed. Her eyes fix sharply on Sarah when she comes in. She is wearing the same clothes she had been the night before.

“Oh,” Sarah says, caught off guard, “you’re awake?” X-23 nods. She looks relieved, eyes bright. “Why haven’t you come out, then?” Sarah asks.

X-23 frowns a little. Her eyes dart quickly behind Sarah and then back, and it takes that half-second for her expression to shift into something unsure.

She says, “I thought the door would be locked.”

Sarah stares.

“It doesn’t lock,” is all she can think to say. An uncomfortable moment passes between them as X-23 absorbs this. Fleetingly, Sarah is angry. It is an anger she is familiar with feeling around X-23, when faced with the evidence of damage that has been done.

It is jarring, after thirteen years, for Sarah to have no one else to blame.

She adds, “I’m not going to lock you up.” She swallows, hard. “Not – ever again. Okay? You shouldn’t be locked up.” It is distasteful that these are things she has to say aloud. But it is obvious she does. “You’re not an animal,” Sarah finishes, disgusted at herself.

X-23 looks quietly pleased to hear this. She sits up a little straighter. Then, abruptly, she stands. Sarah is momentarily startled when she starts walking forward, but moves aside to let her pass. She watches her head with some urgency into the bathroom.

Sarah rubs a hand roughly down her face. It is too early for the sharp twinge of guilt that stabs beneath her breastbone. Too early, and too perilous a situation for it. She gathers herself together. Heads to the kitchen. X-23 is there not five minutes later, sliding into a seat at the table. Her hair is neatly brushed through. She has not changed her clothes. Sarah doesn’t comment on it.

“How are you feeling?”

“I’m hungry,” X-23 tells her.

Sarah’s mouth twitches. “Me too,” she says and for a moment doesn’t know what to do next. She feels on edge, like she is at the same time backed into a corner and overwhelmed by choice. “We’re going to eat breakfast,” she tells X-23, “and then we’re going to get ready.”

Sarah overdoes it on breakfast. She has never been much of a cook, but the instructions on the back of the cans and frozen packages leave little room for error. She sets down two plates piled with sausage, English muffin, beans. She places diced fruit in small bowls on the side. If she had it in the fridge, she would top it off with a flourish of whipped cream, just to stretch out a few more seconds before she has to prepare for battle. Sarah is not a warrior. She is a disgraced academic in far over her head.

She makes herself coffee and sets a glass of water down for X-23. It is nearly half past six in the morning. X-23 wolfs her food down as usual, taking sips of water with her mouth full to make the whole thing slide more easily down her throat.

“We never burned your uniform,” Sarah remembers suddenly. She isn’t quite sure if she should be alarmed. X-23 looks up at her, unconcerned. “Or – should we do that before we leave here?”

“Yes,” X-23 says with her mouth full. “Before we leave.”

“Oh.” Sarah finishes her coffee and notices the faint tremor of her hand as she sets down the cup. She wonders distantly if caffeine was the best thing to mix with a sense of impending doom.

X-23 tucks her hair behind her ear, and Sarah follows the movement with a sudden ache in her chest. She used to braid it, before they started renting X-23 out for missions and every minute Sarah spent in her cell was suddenly far more scrutinized.

 _It's not a barbie doll, Sarah,_ Rice had snapped at her once.

Sarah takes her final bite and stares mournfully down at her empty plate. They are both done eating; Sarah cannot put off the day any longer. Soon they will be found, and if they are unprepared when that happens then they may as well have burned down with the Facility, because that would be a kinder fate for them both.

She means to say something along those lines, but X-23 is not paying attention to her. She is looking at something over Sarah's shoulder. Sarah turns to follow her eyeline. Outside, the sun is coming up over the railing of the deck, between the dense line of trees. It is a forceful pink and gold, and the colours branch through the sky like cracks spreading through glass. She turns back and sees the sight reflected in X-23’s wide pupils.

Sarah was going to go through the house with her, first. Explain the layout of the basement. Show her the code-activated doors. Then go around the perimeter last. Instead, Sarah asks, “Want to go outside?”

X-23’s eyes fix sharply onto her face. It takes her a second to navigate the foreign concept of her own desires.

After a beat, she nods. And then smiles.

***

It is just cold enough to see their breath. Sarah wraps her arms around herself as she acclimates to the brisk air. Her cheeks prickle. The two of them walk down the stairs and stop at the bottom of the little hill. Sarah looks down and is met with the startling sight of X-23’s bare feet crunching over stiff morning grass.

“Why aren’t you wearing shoes?” Sarah asks her. X-23's toes curl into the ground.

“So I can feel the grass.” She narrows her eyes at the house. Casually, the claw in her foot slips out to mark an X into the ground. X-23 spins in a slow, appraising arc. Then she sets to her task.

For the next half-hour, Sarah lingers. She kind of follows X-23 around, hovering nearby and looking on from a distance as she assesses the environment. She is beyond thorough.

Over time, X-23 covers every inch of ground. She intermittently crouches down to look at something closer and disappears into the woods for a further, obscured view. Sometimes up into the trees. She knocks on walls seemingly at random, and Sarah cannot even fathom what she is listening or feeling for. Meticulously, she runs her fingers along all the doors and windows, jumps back and forth to compare them. Opens every code-activated door and peeks inside. More Xs are scratched into the dirt. Every so often she abruptly bends to sniff the ground.

Sarah feels increasingly useless the longer she watches her at work.

When she is done her exhaustive assessment, X-23 asks Sarah questions she cannot even hope to answer – about the house’s foundation, the heating system, the design of the air vents.

“I – think I have the plans somewhere,” Sarah offers. “Would those be helpful?”

“Yes,” X-23 says, and then tells her to bring them like she isn’t sure if it is a question. Sarah turns and hurries into the house.

She has to look in the basement for several minutes before she finds the glossy plastic sleeve, hidden under newspaper. There is a deed there, under a fake name. There are records of the peculiar additions Sarah had made. And then, just underneath, there are blueprints folded up into efficient squares.

Sarah brings them to X-23, who has made her way back onto the roof, and she climbs down to look them over. They sit on the grass with the papers splayed out between them, held in place by a hand or pinned down by a rock or a branch. X-23 asks one or two questions before seeming to give up on the idea of Sarah contributing anything helpful about the infrastructure.

Then she asks, “When did you buy this house?”

Sarah counts back. “Five years ago.”

Wide green eyes look sharply up at her. Anxiety twists in Sarah’s gut; there is the sudden idea that she has made some fatal mistake. “Why?”

X-23 looks back down at the blueprints while she speaks.

“I did not know when you decided to leave the Facility.”

Her affect is fairly flat in general, but it is being wilfully exaggerated here, Sarah notices. She is trying to sound casual.

Sarah tells her, “It didn’t seem like they thought I was worth listening to anymore.” Her eyes drift fleetingly to the back of X-23's hands. X-23 looks nowhere but her face, intensely attentive. “I think Rice thought I overstayed my welcome. And,” she says forcefully, “by that point it was too late to just leave. Not without disappearing. Sutter or Rice would have killed me.”

X-23 shakes her head. “I would have,” she quietly corrects. She looks back down at the blueprints.

“Oh.” Sarah is thrown by the amendment. The method had never been something she considered; Rice by way of X-23. It seems almost a semantic nitpick, but she concedes the difference. “I guess you’re right. Well, then it's a good thing I got to him first.”

X-23 shakes her head again and Sarah realizes she has made the same mistake twice in the same breath.


	3. Nurture

From behind the house, a short walk leads down into a private beach just off the river running parallel to the road. Sarah stands on a damp patch of sandy ground while X-23 sets about her task. She makes shorter work of this side of the property. It is just as tediously thorough to watch. Once she finishes, her attention strays quickly to the water. Sarah follows her as she steps onto the dock.

“Well?” she asks her. “What’s the situation?”

X-23 stands over the river. Her toes are dangling over the edge. The sweater she has on is too long, like nearly everything Sarah has brought for her. She thinks distantly that she really needs to get her some clothes that fit.

X-23 tells her without turning, “Kimura will most likely come in through the northeast window.”

Sarah makes a valiant effort to keep her breathing even. “That’s… your room?”

“The kitchen.”

“Oh.” She is picturing it; the glass shattering, uniformed men swarming in through the window. Kimura’s grin inside her home. She shudders.

“There are three spots in the woods that would be good options to stake out the house from,” X-23 continues. She lowers herself down to dip one bare toe into the lake. “I will set traps at noon.”

“Okay.” Sarah nods. “Makes sense.” She chews at the inside of her cheek. X-23 running around the perimeter all morning was stressful; her standing still is somehow even more so. Sarah bites her thumbnail. “Why wait till noon?”

“The most light,” X-23 says, still not looking at her.

“Ah.” The more questions Sarah asks, the more she is realizing how much she absolutely needs X-23 to survive. She had lingered through some of X-23’s early training, when she was very young. Now she wishes she had paid more attention. “It’s interesting,” she muses to deflect from her own high-strung nerves, “I’ve never gone on a mission with you before.”

That isn’t quite true, her own memory amends, but she presses on. “What would you do next, if I wasn’t here?”

“Swim.” 

The quick answer startles Sarah.

“Really?” she asks. X-23 turns around to look at her. She nods. “Is that something you… usually do on your missions?”

She nods again, almost reluctantly this time.

“If I am near water,” she admits.

Sarah smiles, disarmed.

“I didn’t know that,” she says. She wonders briefly what else she does not know. What X-23 has been doing, over the years, in the few and far-between times when nobody was watching.

She wonders if anyone is watching now.

“I don’t know if we actually have time,” Sarah says, shifting in place.

X-23 says, “We do.”

Sarah is not sure if this is a negotiation, or if X-23 is only informing her of the facts. She is eager to go into the house and show X-23 the basement; she needs them to have some semblance of a plan so she can loosen up the knot of dread her stomach has become. But, she reasons grudgingly, X-23 has said there is time. She would know. It does not occur to her that X-23 hadn’t asked for her permission.

“Fine,” Sarah sighs. “Go.”

X-23 strips off her clothes and dives. She shoots forward under the water and finally comes up for air almost all the way across the river. She turns and starts to front crawl down the length of the stream.

“How’s the water?” Sarah calls to her.

“Cold,” she shouts back. Sarah feels a smile creep up the corner of her mouth. She crosses her arms and watches X-23 swim further into the distance, then turn around, flip onto her back, and head the other way. She does several laps, over and over again. Her pace is leisurely, at ease. She does not rush. It’s calming watching her go back and forth. Sarah loses track of time.

Eventually X-23 stops by the dock, pulling Sarah out of her thoughts. Sarah can barely see her face through the glare of the sun. She raises a hand to shield her eyes.

“Good swim?” Sarah asks the silhouette. She can barely make it out against the bright light, but the rippling of water tells her X-23 nods in response. Sarah sits cross-legged down on the dock and leans forward to run her other hand through the water. X-23 swims close enough for Sarah to just make out her face. Her hand is slowly going numb. She takes it out and wipes it on her thigh.

X-23 treads water in place, her legs cycling rhythmically under the surface. She looks up at Sarah, then very deliberately moves to the side, as if making room. She looks up at her expectantly. Questioning.

Sarah scoffs. She stands back up. “X-23, I can see my own breath.”

X-23 waits a moment longer, then dives down once more.

“Come on,” Sarah tells her, antsy, when she surfaces. “Enough. We should go look at the basement.”

X-23, somewhat reluctantly, climbs back onto the dock. Sarah steps back and out of the line of sunlight; she can see X-23 wring out her hair into the lake. When she turns to pick up her clothes, Sarah can see her skin is pale and covered in gooseflesh. She is trembling slightly. She looks up and her lips are dusky blue.

Sarah takes in a sharp breath. “X-23,you’re frozen solid!”

Her lips are filling up with pink before shifting back to blue, over and over: her healing factor is at odds with the ice-cold water. The effect is bizarre, not unlike the flashing lights of a police car. Sarah rushes over and puts her hands on X-23’s upper arms.

“Why did you stay in so long?” Awkwardly, she rubs up and down a few times. X-23 stands entirely still. When Sarah takes her hands away, she sways slightly forward. After a second, she blinks and catches herself. It’s a strange little moment that does not escape Sarah’s notice. Probably the cold. “Come on. Pick up your clothes, let’s go.”

In the house, X-23 dries herself off with a towel from the bathroom and gets dressed again. Same clothes. Sarah waits for her at the top of the stairs. Her lips are still doing it, shifting back and forth, but the blue is becoming less pronounced each time. Her toes are chalk white. Sarah is cold just looking at her.

She almost asks if she wants to dry her hair, nearly offers her a sweater, socks, something warm to wear. But they both know it isn’t necessary. She will not suffer any damage until it is well below freezing; fifteen, twenty at the least. It will take nearly eight hours for her to even lose a toe. And then it will grow back. Sarah had authorized the tests herself.

They go down the stairs together.

It is the only way down. There is no basement entrance, not anymore. The wall has been replaced and reinforced, the entire underground floor configured not unlike an armory. There are a few small windows high up on all the walls, of the same tinted reinforced glass as the rest. Down the stairs and to the right is the panic room.

It is an armoured grey shed. The room reaches the back wall and the ceiling, but comes not more than four meters across, eight or so meters deep. It can be circled on three sides. There is one door, with a numbered panel and a small, dark green screen above it. No windows. One small blue light is flashing discreetly near the top. There is another small lamp lower down beside a speaker, the light not on. X-23 walks over and places a hand on the metal.

“There’s one entrance,” Sarah tells her. She can hear the pride in her own voice. “The code is 4852004 to get in or out.” X-23 traces her hand gently over the smooth screen above the numbers. Sarah can see a deep crease between her brows.

“What does the blue light signify?”

“Ventilation systems on,” Sarah tells her.

X-23 nods approvingly. She circles the room like a prowling cat. Sarah waits in anticipation for her next question like it is a test she has prepared for for weeks. She has thought this room out from every possible angle, over the course of years. Contingencies upon contingencies, planned out silently in the Facility as she was pushed further out into the margins of their work.

X-23 may be the one doing the heavy lifting keeping them alive, but for this moment, Sarah has all the answers. It makes her feel calmer. More confident. She is determined to survive.

X-23 punches in the code. There is a mechanical whir and then a hiss of air as the door unlocks. She pulls it open and steps inside. Sarah squints, assaulted by the sudden burn of white walls on her eyes. She had forgotten how bright it is inside. There is not much; exactly enough for two to survive for a few months: a pantry filled with food, a toilet and sink, a curtain bisecting the room.

“What is this for?” X-23 asks, pulling it back. Behind it is a mattress on the floor with two sets of pillows and blankets folded on top of it.

“Privacy,” Sarah says. X-23 glances at her, expressionless. She lets the curtain go and kneels down on the mattress, her attention drawn to the button and speaker on the wall.

“Intercom,” Sarah says, lingering in the doorframe. X-23 nods slowly. Experimentally, she presses the button. There is a soft clicking sound as the system turns on. Her hair is still damp, and her shirt is dark with water where it falls, tangled and wet, over her shoulder. Sarah wonders why she has not put it up. She has the irritated urge to do it for her.

X-23 looks intently over the intercom.

“There’s phone access,” Sarah continues. “Internet connection. Both passcode-locked from the inside.” X-23 does not look up or react. “The routers are over there,” she stresses, pointing to the corner. “No external signal gets in through the door.”

Still no response. Sarah knows X-23 is listening, though she does not show it. She is examining the intercom with intense focus, poring over something Sarah cannot see. She is starting to feel antsy. She keeps talking.

“There should be enough food for five or six months, nothing that requires cooking. That box on the wall, it lets you control power, water, heat from the inside. Passcode-locked, of course, like everything else.” She rocks back and forth on her feet. “Separate power sources. As I’ve mentioned, I think.”

It had taken a not insubstantial chunk of her savings to set that up. Money and time, all thrown into pre-empting a thousand possible scenarios. Into making it perfect.

“What do you think?” she finally asks when X-23 turns to look in her direction. Sarah is hopeful for something beyond the tepid commentary she had given her last night.

“It looks like my cell,” X-23 declares.

Sarah does a sweep around with her eyes.

“It does,” she agrees. Sarah has no idea what to make of that. “Is that good or bad?”

X-23 considers this. She glances around, then back at Sarah, looking unsure. After a while, she slowly shakes her head.

“Okay, well, besides that.”

“It is very well secured,” X-23 says finally. “It will be useful tomorrow.”

Sarah preens.

“Here, let’s try it,” Sarah suggests, emboldened, and steps out, pushing the door closed behind her. It whirs and clicks as it locks. Sarah takes a step back and waits. After a moment, the little light begins to glow green. Sarah presses the matching button and hears staticky breathing. “Can you hear me?”

“Yes,” X-23’s voice comes out tinny through the little speaker. She says nothing else.

“Good,” Sarah says, and lets the button go. The staticky breaths disappear into a gaping silence, and suddenly it is as if Sarah is alone. She turns and looks up at the dim light coming through the small basement window. The sun is climbing higher in the sky. Soon it will be mid-day. They had left Rice’s watches outside the Facility, but there is a very real clock ticking inexorably down all the same. A mission coming to a close.

She wants to live. More than that, she wants a life like this sleepy morning moment, full of calm and safety and quiet. To pass time unobtrusively, until enough has gone by that the nagging guilt of everything she’s done has faded away into nothing. For time to wash away every mistake she has made. Sarah wants to live and work in peace, away from cruel people that have hovered around her for her entire life and that would do her harm. And she wants X-23 with her, away from the people that would do the same to her. She is not their property. She never should have been their property, and it has taken Sarah too long to realize that. She wants X-23 with her, where she belongs.

Sarah has always wanted more than she deserved.

There is a whir and then a hiss of air behind her. She turns to see the door push open. X-23 stands in the entrance with her hand on the metal, looking unsure. She has not moved one inch past the threshold. She never could, before, when Sarah had shut a door between them. She had never known the codes, had any of the keys. They look at each other for a long moment.

“We should add my biometrics,” X-23 says finally.

Sarah lets out a breath. “Okay,” she says, and they do.

***

Hours later, there is nothing left to do but wait. X-23 had set up whatever she planned to in the woods – an ordeal which had a involved a lot of trips back and forth with tools and cleaning supplies and string – and now was going through the house for a third time, checking that every entrance was sealed. Sarah watches her from the couch. She pictures an hourglass, and can feel the thundering weight of every imaginary grain of sand trickling down. She might die tomorrow.

She says it aloud. It does not make the idea any less terrifying. X-23 tries the front doorknob one more time for good measure and then turns to Sarah with an unhappy look on her face. “We both might,” she adds.

X-23’s expression darkens. Slowly, she shakes her head.

“No,” Sarah muses. “You won’t, will you.”

X-23 comes over and sits down on the other side of the couch. She sets her hands on her knees, legs dangling. Her toes reach barely far enough to brush against the floor.

This is the longest uninterrupted time they have spent together in years. Sarah’s throat is tight.

“What do we do now?” she asks. X-23 just stares at her. Sarah matches her, stare for stare.

Their eyes are exactly the same colour.

Physically, there are three things they have in common: black hair, green eyes, the same full lips. It was noticeable early. Even Debbie had commented on it, off the one photo Sarah had ever showed her. They share nothing else; the shape of their eyes is different, the texture of their hair not quite the same. X-23 is much shorter than Sarah. Her skin is less pale, her body hair thicker and more pronounced. Different figure, different ears, different proportions. A lack of resemblance expected for two people that do not share DNA.

But the similarities in their faces are enough to maybe suggest relation. Hint at it. At least offer plausible deniability about its existence.

Side-by-side, Sarah thinks she could maybe be her mother. If one doesn’t look too close.

“Come here,” Sarah says, falling back on old routines. She pats the couch immediately beside her. “I’ll braid your hair.”

A surprised expression passes over X-23’s face, like that was not what she had expected her to say. Sarah is not sure what X-23 expects from her anymore. The moment passes, then X-23 brightens and scoots obediently over, closing the distance. She turns her back to Sarah and folds her hands in her lap.

Sarah gently sweeps X-23’s hair back behind her shoulders. It is messy and half-dry, down to her shoulder blades. Sarah has always liked the way it held its shape. There had been an internal disagreement between the tacticians and the behaviourists about what length to keep it. As far as Sarah knows, the debate had still been ongoing when they fled. Sarah has always wanted to grow it out. Maybe now she could.

“You’ve stopped talking,” Sarah comments, gathering every stray strand to fall down X-23’s back. She smooths it out with the flat of her hand. “You were speaking quite a bit today, and now you’ve stopped again.”

X-23 is silent. It is not a pointed silence; it is the silence of someone who cannot think what there is to say. Sarah begins detangling X-23’s hair with her fingers. She leans back into Sarah’s fingers each time they brush her scalp.

When she was small, X-23 used to ask Sarah for this, from time to time. And then as Sarah’s time in the cell became more closely scrutinized, she would start telling her no. Until X-23 asked less and less, and then not at all, and then gradually stopped speaking altogether.

“It’s just us,” Sarah says softly. “You can talk to me.”

Finally, the words seem to resonate. X-23 half-turns her head, before she remembers her hair. She snaps her head back to face forward. Sarah waits a moment longer, then gives up.

“French braid or regular?” she asks, sighing.

X-23 answers instantly. “French.”

The immediate response is irritating; Sarah grinds her teeth together once in frustration, then unclenches them. Dutifully, Sarah scrapes her nails along X-23’s scalp. It’s fine, she tells herself. They are still in mission mentality. There will be plenty of time later. Or, of course, none at all.

Sarah swallows nervously and does her best to part X-23’s hair without a comb. The motion pulls her head back, and Sarah can see her eyes have drifted closed.

“I’ve missed doing this,” Sarah admits.

X-23 says, “Me too.”

Sarah doesn’t actually start braiding for a long time. She brushes X-23’s hair slowly, indulgently drawing out the process. Taking her time. There are memories lingering in the air between them. Ghosts of little moments they had shared back in the white routine of X-23’s cell. X-23 is loose-limbed and relaxed under Sarah’s hands, breathing deeply. At ease. She had been the same way in the water. Sarah thinks about the sunrise glinting off the river. About the bright glare of X-23’s cell, and her own face reflected in the glass as she looked in. About reflection.

There is a letter, in Sarah’s bag.

She had written it the night before they fled – all in one go, an impulsive stream-of-consciousness regurgitation onto a stack of loose paper. Her pen shaking, she had scribbled down everything she had owed X-23 for fourteen years. An explanation. An apology. A name.

It had been almost physically painful to write. Keyed up on emotion and adrenaline, Sarah had even arranged for it to be sent to Weapon X in the then-likely event of her death, on the off chance that X-23 might seek him out. She had canceled those arrangements as soon as they’d stepped foot inside the cottage. Now the letter lies tucked into an envelope, burning a hole in the bottom of Sarah’s bag.

Sarah has never been good at saying things aloud. It seems that on paper is not much easier; there had been opportunities since they arrived. She did not take them. She can see herself, right now, not taking another. In her letter, Sarah tells X-23 that she is past forgiveness. But there is the terrifying notion that reading it may push X-23 to actually agree – and it is that that turns Sarah’s insides to ice. It is one thing to be unforgivable. It is another not to be forgiven.

Sarah has no elastic, so she braids down as far as she can before X-23’s hair tapers out and she is forced to stop. She runs one hand down the length of the plait.

“Done,” she announces. X-23 turns to face her. With her hair pulled back behind her head, her green eyes are enormous in her face. She reaches a hand back and feels Sarah’s handiwork. Sarah waits. X-23 looks entirely satisfied just sitting there. “…Are you going to look in the mirror?”

X-23 tilts her head at the suggestion. “Why?”

 _Why,_ Sarah mouths. She momentarily considers if she has been missing the point of styling hair for all of her adult life.

“Don’t you want to see how you look?”

“Okay.”

Somewhat aimlessly, X-23 gets up and walks out of the room. Sarah watches her go, a little miffed.

“You look nice,” Sarah makes herself say when X-23 walks back into the room. X-23’s eyes flash; a split-second assessment happens behind them.

“Thank you,” she says. She walks over, not reacting one way or the other, and sits back down where she had been a moment ago. They are talking past each other, Sarah realizes.

“I always thought you liked it when I did your hair because you liked the way it made you look,” Sarah explains.

Like a normal girl, she thinks but does not say. Like a person who lives in the world instead of a tool stored seven stories underneath it. X-23 shakes her head.

“Why, then?”

“Because you touched me.”

It is as if Sarah has touched a live wire. A moment of shock, impact – and then a second later, pain. She can feel the words branching rapidly through her body, Lichtenberg figures of shame. She swallows. She cannot look at her own hands.

This is one of those moments in which Sarah told herself she would take responsibility. It is not her natural instinct. Sarah does a mental replay of the past two days, every time X-23 had lingered on her hand on her shoulder, every time X-23 had come a foot away and then no closer or sat across from her and made no move forward.

There is really only one possible response.

Sarah closes the distance between them. She scoots over until she is pressing into X-23’s side, and then wraps her arms around her. It is far from natural – a lego embrace, body parts going to their designated spots and staying stiffly in place. They have never hugged before.

X-23 sits rigid for all of two seconds. Then she leans her head into Sarah’s sternum, her cheek warm against her chest. Her hand comes up onto Sarah’s back and rests there flat against it. She takes a slow breath in, like waking up. Like coming up for air.

“I’m sorry,” Sarah says inadequately.

For once, she is glad when X-23 says nothing in response.

***

Hours pass. It becomes dark. The evening is a series of softly lit tableaus:

X-23 sits on the couch watching the sunset. Her foot dangles off the side; its claw comes out and then _snakts_ back in, over and over. A thin line of blood runs down her toes and begins to drip onto the carpet.

Outside, the trees are a dark, indistinct mass. The wind ruffles them and through the leaves briefly shine stars, and maybe cameras, and maybe eyes.

Sarah considers what to make for dinner. She stares into the freezer and tries not to think of it as a last meal.

***

Eventually it is night. Sarah goes to her room as soon as the sun fully sets, unsure what else there is to do. It is a relief to drop into bed, her adrenaline reserves finally having petered out. But at the same time sleep seems like an impossibility. Her heart is hammering in her chest.

Sarah peers at the thin lines of light bleeding through around her door. She watches for shadows, listens for footsteps. Dread keeps her frozen in place, lying in her bed and waiting for the door to open. Knowing she will be helpless to stop what comes next.

It is all very familiar.

Sarah pulls the blanket up, high up, until just her eyes and the tips of her fingers are peeking out from beneath the covers. She feels just as small as she had when she was a child.

Even back then, Sarah had never believed in monsters. She has always known that it was ever only people. She knows it is only people now, coming for her. This does not make her any less afraid, but at least with people Sarah understands the playing field. People can be made. People can be unmade. Sarah has dabbled in both.

The door creaks open, and Sarah’s heart stops. A silhouette slips in, so silently she thinks perhaps it is only a shadow, and then it moves closer and comes into the light. X-23 squints at her.

“Dr. Kinney,” she whispers.

Sarah’s heart stutters back into some semblance of a rhythm. She croaks out, “I’m awake.”

X-23 walks in and sits cross-legged on the floor by Sarah’s bed.

“I smelled fear.”

Sarah turns onto her side under the blanket. to look at her. “You’ve killed people with powers before,” she asks. “Haven’t you?”

“Yes.”

Sarah pulls the blanket down her nose. “Many?”

X-23 frowns. “No.”

She is slouched forward, elbows digging into her thighs. Sarah can hear the soft sluicing and knitting back together of skin, the anxious sliding in and out of X-23’s claws. It is a grotesque nervous habit.

“We should sleep,” Sarah says.

“Yes.”

“Are you planning to stay there all night?”

“Yes,” X-23 says again.

It takes Sarah a few beats to realize she is serious.

“X-23,” she says slowly, tautly, “come up here.”

She stands up. Sarah hesitates, reluctant to leave the cocoon that had never protected her from anything. She glances at the door, holds her breath, and lifts the covers up. X-23 slides herself in, and Sarah lets the blankets fall over them both. They lie nearly nose to nose.

“I’m afraid,” Sarah confesses.

X-23 curls in closer, her head coming down so Sarah’s lips are level with her forehead. The letter is in the bottom of Sarah’s bag, tucked into the corner of the room. She can feel it there like a beating heart.

She should get up, give it to X-23, sit with her as she reads through. But Sarah already knows she will not do that. It is the third time in as many days when Sarah makes herself say something when she would have said nothing, before. She should verbalize some of the things she had written down. But everything in there is too big, the words getting stuck on her throat in the way up.

“You’re my daughter,” she says, choking on it. “Do you know that?”

X-23 is still. After a beat, she nods, her forehead brushing against Sarah’s lips as she does. Sarah presses her mouth to to her brow and falls asleep.

***

Sarah wakes up and immediately panics. Daylight pours in through the window; it is later than she had ever dreamed she would manage to sleep. She must have turned onto her back in the night. X-23 is still there beside her, a warm line pressed against her side. Sarah lifts her head to look down at her. Her eyes are closed.

“X-23,” she whispers hotly. “Wake up.”

“I am awake,” comes the murmured reply. Sarah startles. X-23 does not open her eyes.

“Is there anyone in the house?”

X-23 shakes her head.

“How do you know?”

“I would smell them,” she says. “I would have heard them enter.”

“What if they came in while you were sleeping?” Sarah frets.

“We would have been attacked.”

Sarah sits up stiff and quickly, like Count Orlok rising from his casket. X-23’s eyes open unhappily.

“I checked the house five times throughout the night,” she says. “There is no one inside.”

Right. X-23 wakes up every hour and a half to assess. Sarah knows that. She has known that for years; panic makes it hard to remember. She forces herself to relax a little.

“Did you eat?”

X-23 nods. It is strangely disappointing; Sarah has just woken up and already feels behind.

“Okay. I’ll… go get ready.”

When she is dressed, X-23 finally climbs out of the bed. Sarah looks down at her and feels a punch of nervous energy. At some point between last night and now, X-23 had changed back into her uniform. She is in chin-to-toe black, tiny and lethal. Her hair is still braided, mussed from sleep and unravelling at the bottom. Sarah cranes her neck down to look at her.

“How long—” she starts to ask, when from outside the door, there is a loud, glass-cracking thud.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It is finally up! Next chapter will be (hopefully) exciting.


	4. Target X

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hope you guys like ACTION SCENES

The first thud is too quiet for Dr. Kinney to hear. Not for X-23; her ears perk up and her heart speeds up at once, on immediate alert. A second later, something hits the window hard enough to crack the glass.

Dr. Kinney stops talking. X-23 does not hesitate; it is time to move, so she grabs Dr. Kinney’s wrist and drags her out of the room. As soon as the door opens, she picks up a sharp smell – strong enough to mask any people that might be inside or nearby – and a loud sizzle. Burning? She sniffs experimentally. No, not exactly. They run into the kitchen, and X-23 pulls Dr. Kinney behind her just in time to see the hole where acid had melted the window glass away – and for the taser that reaches through to fire straight at her.

It hits X-23 in the shoulder. She can tell at once it is not a standard taser – the voltage that slams into her would be lethal without her healing factor at play. This weapon had been been made to counter her. Or, perhaps Weapon X. Her jaw clamps shut. She can feel the ebb and flow inside her, her body healing damage as quickly as it comes. She falls to one knee. The current is pulled into the metal in her claws – her forearm smokes and reddens, cooking from the inside. A uniformed man slides his way carefully through the hole he’d made in the window.

A Weapon Plus soldier, or perhaps one on loan from some government or another. She cannot tell which from the nondescript tactical black and grey. X-23 has been rented out to most of them. It is hard to think through the burning pain, but the man is getting to his feet now. He needs to die. It hurts to move or breathe, but that is irrelevant. The mission persists despite the pain. If she fails, there will only be more pain later.

X-23 growls, slides a foot over to step on the wire, then lets out a roar as she wrenches herself to her feet and rips the thing out. Immediately, there is relief. There are pinpricks of pain all over her, quickly receding. She flares her nostrils and exhales smoke.

The man draws his weapon; X-23 throws the wire at him and steps forward. His armour absorbs the voltage easily, sparks dancing harmlessly over the padding. He shoots before she can come close. He clearly has been told not to hit her brain; there is a burst of pain, and then a spray of blood and fluid as her knee explodes. But X-23 was ready for it – she ignores the pain, pushes back off her other leg and propels herself like a living bullet.

In a second, she is across the room. She punches into him with both hands so that the spaces between her knuckles line up with the gaps between his ribs, and releases her claws.

There is the screech of metal against metal as they meet inside him. The soft sizzle of heated adamantium sinking into flesh. X-23 flexes her wrists with a growl, feels the body under her go rigid with pain. There is the fleshy hiss of shredded lung. He cannot breathe enough to scream.

She pulls her arms back, jumps off him onto her mostly reformed leg, and he drops.

“Down!” she calls to Dr. Kinney just as gunfire sprays into the room.

They both fall flat on their stomachs. Sprays of wood erupt around them where bullets hit the floor. X-23 looks over. Dr. Kinney is out in the open. X-23 kicks in a wide arc, the claw in her foot slicing through the legs of the dining table so the thing falls, providing some cover. Dr. Kinney shimmies forward under it. X-23 crawls forward too, towards the man she’d just killed. She takes the weapons off his body, holsters them quickly on her person.

She thinks about her position. Dr. Kinney had not prepared many weapons, when she’d fled. They are at something of a disadvantage that way. Their only weapons are a handful of guns scattered around the house, the chemical bombs she’d rigged up in the woods, and X-23 herself.

Eventually the rain of gunfire stops. They’d grazed X-23 a few times, flesh wounds that are already completely gone. It wasn’t her they were aiming for anyway. After the acid, the onslaught of bullets was enough to weaken the glass. X-23 can see the slivery cracks in the window, the reinforced material rendered friable, barely holding its shape.

Kimura crashes through like a human cannonball.

For a moment, all X-23 can hear is the shatter. Kimura lands on the ground still curled up, arms wrapped around her shins, head down. There are pieces of glass sparkling in her hair. Gas canisters on her belt. Her eyes flash open.

Adrenaline shoots into X-23’s blood. She jumps to her feet and unsheathes both claws in both her hands, all at once.

“Go!” she shouts, and Dr. Kinney scrambles to her feet. Kimura’s eyes trail after her as she rushes toward the stairs, and X-23 feels dread so acute it is nearly painful. She is so familiar with what happens now. The failure. The thing she loves taken away. The pain, the pain, the pain.

Kimura unfolds herself and straightens to her feet. She smiles, wide and sharp. They both listen to Dr. Kinney’s quick footsteps down the stairs. X-23’s heart pounds in her chest, hammering hard.

“Hi, X,” Kimura says, like she always does. “You gonna do something stupid?”

X-23 raises her gun and fires at Kimura’s eye.

“Skin?” Dr. Kinney had asked her, the day before. “You’re sure it’s only her skin that’s invulnerable?”

“No.”

“But you think so?”

X-23 had thought about it for a long time. “I don’t know.”

 _You can’t hurt her,_ Rice had told her once. Nonspecific.

“Were you not involved in creating her?”

“Barely,” Dr. Kinney had said, with a note of bitterness. “I’ve worked on a few mutant subjects with invulnerable skin. Sometimes it was just their skin. Sometimes… it varied.”

“Kimura is not a mutant.”

“No, she isn’t.”

They’d looked at each other with the mutual understanding they had nothing.

“It’s worth a shot, I guess,” Dr. Kinney had said. She was always pragmatic that way.

The bullet hits Kimura’s left eye with perfect aim. Her head snaps back from the force, knocking her briefly off balance. X-23 watches, hopeful. She keeps her gun up. Kimura finds her footing. X-23 hears the clink of the bullet on the ground a second later.

Kimura lowers her head down and winks. With the left eye.

“Now that’s _definitely_ against the rules,” she says. “X, when are you –”

X-23 fires again, this time into her open mouth.

There is no burst of blood behind Kimura’s head, no shattering of skull. Kimura reels, thrown back into the wall behind her, and gags. Her eyes go wide. She leans down, braces her hands on her thighs, and coughs violently. Her stomach spasms like she might vomit. X-23 watches in silent horror as she heaves.

When Kimura looks up, her eyes are wet and furious. She spits the bullet out. X-23 watches it bounce off the hardwood.

“That’s gonna cost you, clone,” she growls.

Kimura runs at her. X-23 shoots again, just to push her back, then turns and bolts towards her room. She hears Kimura pick up the broken table and haul it overhead. X-23 turns at the whoosh of air, and slices the thing clean in half before it hits. The two pieces fall harmlessly at her sides, and where they part, there is Kimura, suddenly far too close. She breaks X-23’s nose with her first punch. X-23 rears back, tasting blood. She claws at Kimura’s throat out of instinct, and hears that same familiar fruitless clang. Kimura punches her again – X-23 manages to dodge, and kicks at Kimura’s legs. Her footing barely falters.

Kimura grabs her around the throat with both hands, lifts her in the air, and squeezes tight.

Kimura’s grip is too strong for any air to pass; X-23 cannot breathe at all. She can hear her heart pounding in her head, the backlog of blood building rapid pressure. Kimura’s arms strain from the effort.

“How many times are we gonna do this, X?” Kimura says through gritted teeth. Her hair has come loose, is falling wildly in front of her face. There is a small, transparent cannula in Kimura’s nose, X-23 is close enough to notice. An air purifier of some kind. X-23 tries to peel her fingers off, pull her hands off by the wrists, but she is too strong.

X-23 can hear the hiss of acid – in her room this time – and then a clatter somewhere above her. Something being thrown into the vents.

There is a white-hot flash of pain as her vertebrae start to strain and crack.

“You’re a made to order product. Why did you think you could do anything –” Kimura’s hands twist and tighten like she is wringing out a cloth – “except what you’re _told_?”

The left side of X-23’s field of vision suddenly explodes into darkness. Her left arm begins to tingle, abruptly numb. Another few seconds and her neck will break.

Painstakingly, she raises her arms and holds her claws in front of Kimura’s face. Kimura sneers.

“We’ve been over this,” she chides. “You can’t cut me.”

X-23 strikes one claw with another, once, twice, until sparks fly. It takes a second, but Kimura’s hair is dry and thin and catches quickly. She doesn’t notice at once. The flames race over the strands falling in front of her face – her eyelashes catch in a hot burst of light.

Kimura shuts her eyes, cries out. Her grip falters. X-23 plants her feet on Kimura’s stomach and kicks off, freeing herself. She slips, falling briefly onto her rear, then rights herself and runs toward her room. She hears another clatter in the vents and this time she can smell it – the sour burn of tear gas. She had turned off the ventilation the night before; it does not spread, and she is deeply satisfied at her own foresight.

She opens the door to her room just in time to see another taser fire at her. X-23 jumps back, pulls the door closed so the wire embeds in the wood. It begins to smoke. She kicks the door open again and dodges the second shot.

“X-23, stand down,” the man calls, and X-23 fires. His shoulder is thrown back from the impact but the bullet does not go through the black and grey armour. He uncaps something from his belt and throws it to land at her feet. Gas bursts violently out. It shoots its way up her nose and blinds her, or maybe burns out her eyes – whatever comes out is so vicious and noxious that she cannot tell. It feels like her head has caught fire. X-23 kicks it away out the open door, not quite fast enough. Her nose and eyes and lungs burn with agony. She cannot breathe. She cannot see.

Another taser hits her – from behind this time, another man must have come in that she’d missed when the gas hit – and this time she turns, grabs the wire and _pulls_. The man is trained to hold onto his gun, and she yanks him right onto her claws. It is a blind stab, and this time he screams. He lets the trigger go, and the pulse of electricity ends. X-23 is starting to see fuzzy shapes, vague outlines. She can see where the man has fallen, the dark puddle of blood spreading quickly around him. A bullet hits her in the back, a bright bloom of pain that makes her cry out. She feels a rib crack and mend together.

“Stand _down,_ ” the first man says again, but his voice is shaking. His sweat is starting to smell thicker, sour with fear. His fear works to her advantage.

X-23 turns and growls, “No.”

There is a noise coming from her closet, a disorganized beeping and a series of metal whirs. Someone on the roof trying to break open the code-locked trap door in her closet. She hears Kimura stomping her way towards her.

Too many. Not enough time. X-23 bends down, hauls the fallen soldier up under his armpits, and crouches behind him. The soldier standing shoots at him – grazes a weak spot in the neck where the helmet imperfectly meets the rest of the suit, and hits X-23 in the collarbone. Her blood spurts out, warm over her chest. Her arm briefly goes numb, her face abruptly cold. She switches her gun to the other hand and throws the man forward. Two bullets left. Her vision is clear.

She jumps to her feet, shoots at the man standing, misses, shoots again and hits – in the neck, right in that same flaw in their armour he had just inadvertently revealed.

It is a trick she’d been taught at seven. One of the first she had learned. It should not have worked on Facility-trained operatives; it is satisfying that it had. He drops, clutching at his neck with both hands. He will be dead in seconds. X-23 throws the empty gun away. The other man is still alive, has drawn his weapon, even – but Kimura crashes open the door before she can get to him.

X-23 gets abruptly down, slides under the bed. There is a small rocket launcher, far and away the most powerful weapon Dr. Kinney had managed to obtain, secured to the underside there. Barely enough time to aim. She takes it down.

“You little bitch,” Kimura is shouting. “I’m gonna tear you into _pieces_ –”

X-23 rolls out and fires. It hits Kimura in the stomach and launches her back across the house, crashing her into the back wall with an explosion and a mist of debris. Kimura hits the countertop and bends backwards from the impact, her head hitting the wall with a painful thud. The armoured window cracks as if it is made of sugar glass. Kimura drops, limp. X-23 can hear that she is not dead. Merely stunned. At best, unconscious. She should have fired at her head.

No time. There is another soldier in the kitchen that Kimura had whizzed past; he runs toward the stairs to the basement. Panic grips X-23’s throat like iron. She crouches down beside the soldier that is still alive. He doesn’t even try to fire at her.

“Acid,” she growls, taking the gun. She grabs at his belt with her other hand. “Which one?”

The man’s voice is reedy and thin with pain. “This one,” he says, handing her the right canister, “please—”

She takes it from him and runs out the room. The other soldier is most of the way down the stairs; she stands at the top, throws the canister down at him, and shoots it.

Acid explodes over his back and neck. There is a suspended moment where she does not know if it has worked, panic spiking inside her like a fever. But then the suit starts smoking, and the man’s steps falter. He starts to scream. It grows quickly in intensity; he falls down the remainder of the stairs and then fumbles to his knees, shrieking in agony. X-23 glimpses back at Kimura; she is climbing slowly to her feet, shaking her head like she is shaking off a daze. X-23 waits for enough of his suit to burn away, then fires into the back of his neck. The screaming stops.

She runs back into her room; the fallen soldier is clutching at his stab wound. The disorganized beeping from her closet is beginning to fall into a pattern. Closer to breaking through the security. That it is taking this long is a testament to Dr. Kinney’s reinforcements.

The soldier takes off his helmet with one shaking hand and throws it away. He is panting and pale, tear tracks down his face. She dimly recognizes his face. A Facility soldier after all.

“X-23, please,” he says, and hearing him say her name makes her stomach twist strangely. “Please, I’m sorry – I don’t want to die –”

She stabs a claw into his brain. None of them want to die. All of them are sorry. Many of them have families. She hardly hears the words anymore.

She cannot remember one that has called her X-23 before, though.

She checks her weapon. Four bullets left. Kimura is walking towards her now, her hair singed and charred, her eyes wild. There are two pale lines of skin where her eyebrows used to be.

“Enough, X,” she shouts. “Kill as many as you want, you’ll get punished for each one. You can’t beat me!” X-23 grabs some more canisters from the soldiers’ belts, then runs to the closet. She opens the door and sees the buttons on the numbered panel flashing in odd patterns. “They taught you better than this,” Kimura calls. “You can’t keep _stalling_!”

X-23 knows she is right. She cannot stall Kimura forever. She needs to kill her. If she can’t–

X-23 cuts that thought off before it can move forward. Pushes it down. No time. If she can’t, she will suffer, there is no point dwelling on how and for how long. The mission persists.

She keys in the code and yanks the trap door down. The soldier is caught off guard – he falls head first through the opening, and X-23 stabs her claws through the visor of his helmet. He dangles there, dead. The adamantium is sharp enough that the lens barely cracks around the wounds. She pulls him down and climbs up onto the roof. Kimura steps into her bedroom. They lock eyes through the open trapdoor. X-23 slams it shut.

There aren’t any more men on the roof, which is a pleasant surprise. X-23 looks over the property. There is smoke in the distance, where her explosions had been triggered in the woods. She sees two plumes coming up. At least one body that she can spot in the foliage. A truck is pulling up behind Dr. Kinney’s car. One soldier in the front. Possibly another one inside the storage container.

Transport to take her back. The sight makes her stomach twist again.

X-23 stalks soundlessly across the roof. There is another trapdoor, this one leading into the bathroom. She opens it and lowers herself silently down. She measures her breaths, keeps them quiet. The door makes a small click when she presses it shut, but that is all. X-23 takes a moment to listen. In the house, nearly silence. She braces herself and reaches for the door.

Kimura slams it open with enough force to make X-23 stumble back.

She steps inside and kicks the door closed behind them. Her hair is charred around her face; she is dusted with plaster dust. There is a wild look on her face. Without eyelashes or eyebrows, her eyes are enormous. Her pupils are different sizes.

Her pupils are different sizes.

The sight gives X-23 pause. Concussed? For the first time, X-23 feels a burst of hope. She eagerly goes for the head again.

X-23 punches; Kimura moves out of the way. The tiny bathroom is cramped, and Kimura crowds in close. X-23 punches a second time, without enough space to wind up, and Kimura catches her hand. She yanks her closer and throws a knee into her gut. X-23 doubles over with a huff of pain. She reaches for the door, but Kimura grabs her hair, jerking her head back, and winds the braid around her fist.

“This again?” Kimura says, pulling hard enough that there is a jolt of pain in the back of X-23’s neck. “Kinney’s still got you playing dress-up?”

She slams X-23’s head into the mirror. Her vision blurs, then refocuses. Kimura quickly pulls back and slams her against the glass again and again until it cracks. X-23 fights back nausea. She can feel her own concussion dissipating.

“That’s for shooting me with a fucking rocket,” Kimura says, gripping the back of X-23’s head to smash her face down into the sink. X-23 feels her skull cave in. Her vision goes white, then red. There is a smear of blood on the white porcelain; X-23 can see it from where she drops on the floor and looks up. She cannot see the shadow of her nose between her eyes.

Desperately, she kicks at Kimura’s legs. Kimura stumbles, falls to a knee, then punches X-23’s face into the tile floor. It is hard to think. She is losing, like every time before. Kimura hits her again, again. X-23 slices wildly – her claws tear Kimura’s uniform but do nothing to her body. She catches X-23’s hand and breaks her wrist with one quick motion, like an afterthought.

X-23 hears herself gurgling with pain. There is so much blood in her mouth and nose and throat that she can barely take in air. Her nose is slowly turning inside out back to its regular place, and the crunch of cartilage is agonizing in itself.

Kimura stands. “And this is for burning off my _hai_ r.”

Her foot comes up, and suddenly –

It is all very familiar. They have been in this position a hundred times before: X-23 on the floor, looking up at the sole of Kimura’s boot hovering over her. White surroundings stained with her own blood.

She is tired. And she is _losing_. But she and Kimura have an old routine, and she is all at once so desperate to break it. Dr. Kinney is waiting for her. She said she would never lock her in again.

It is suddenly easy to roll out of the way and aim her gun under Kimura’s jaw. Her skin is indestructible, but the glazed, mismatched eyes X-23 had seen mean that her brain may not be. Maybe the rest of her insides aren’t either.

X-23 fires. Kimura’s head whips back – X-23 stands, holds her gun inches from Kimura’s forehead, and fires until the thing is empty.

Bullets ricochet into the tile. Kimura’s head hits the back wall on the last few shots. Her eyes unfocus. When the gun clicks empty, she swings, sluggishly, and X-23 moves quickly out of the way. She swings again, and again X-23 dodges with relative ease.

“I’m gonna rip out your eyes,” Kimura says, but her speech is slightly slurred. “And once they grow back, I’m gonna kill Kinney. And I’m gonna make you watch.”

X-23’s gaze is drawn again to the cannula in her nose. More credence to the theory that her internal organs are not indestructible after all. X-23 lunges close, but Kimura knocks her back. She waits for Kimura to come this time, weaves her way under the attack, then rips the thing out of her nose and slices it in half.

Then X-23 jumps away, locks the bathroom door, and slices the door handle clean off.

“What’s your plan here, clone?” Kimura asks her, right before she grabs all the gas canisters she has taken from the soldier and releases them under Kimura’s feet.

“Have you ever thought about how you’d kill her?” Dr. Kinney had asked.

The question had made X-23's heart race. But she had nodded.

“How?”

“Drowning,” she said darkly. It is a – daydream of hers. A fantasy she clings to when she is in pain.

“Drowning?” Dr. Kinney sounded curious. “Hmm.” She nodded to herself then, a little gesture X-23 recognized very well. The nod she did when she had some new idea, when she has come up with the skeleton of some new experiment she wanted to try.

“Would probably work. She still eats, drinks, sleeps,” Dr. Kinney had said, eyes glazing over. “Breathes. She’s still human.”

“She is stronger than me.”

“So?”

X-23 had shaken her head. “So I cannot drown her.”

Dr. Kinney looked up at her very slowly.

“No?”

The gas fills the room in a second. X-23 jumps into the bathtub, pulls the shower curtain over herself. She screws her eyes shut, covers her mouth and nose with both hands, and does not breathe. Even so, her skin tingles with sharp pricks of pain. There is a gun in the tub; X-23 does not dare move to reach for it.

The bathroom has no windows. The ventilation is off. The air is heavy with the substance – the vapours that have condensed back into liquid patter down on the shower curtain. She hopes fervently they do not seep through. The fumes creep into the bathtub, slink under the gaps in the curtain. X-23 feels her hands and face and wherever her uniform is torn enough to expose skin go hot and tingling. The canisters release for nearly three minutes. She takes one shallow breath in that time and feels as if she has inhaled molten glass. She covers her mouth and nose tightly and fights the urge to cough, her stomach clenching until the irritation in her throat has healed away.

Eventually, the hiss of the gas fades to a quiet sigh, then ends altogether. X-23 waits. Her heart is beating quickly. She cannot hear Kimura’s breathing from beneath the curtain. She slowly eases her hands away from her face – she cannot smell anything besides the caustic sting of the gas. She sits up and peeks from under the curtain – her eyes sting badly enough that she has to shut them until the pain ebbs. She opens them again for long enough to see Kimura on the floor beside the tub. She is lying still, her hands clasped over her mouth and nose. Her eyes are shut. X-23 closes her own eyes when her vision starts to blur. She opens them again and bends down, hand shaking, to check Kimura’s pulse.

Her own heart is racing. For the first time since she can remember, there is – a chance. A possibility, when there has never been one before. Never. It is close enough for her to touch, inches away from her fingers.

She is afraid. She presses her fingers to Kimura’s neck and feels disappointment bounce against her fingertips. Regular. Strong. Very much alive.

Kimura’s eyes open. It takes X-23 too long to see the flashing light on the back of Kimura’s glove, the sign of some internal mechanism hard at work. Too long to hear the hiss of air over the sounds of the dissipating gas. Kimura rips her own hand off her face and hits the back of it hard against X-23’s cheek. She gets a glimpse of the attachments in Kimura’s gloves and feels everything slip away.

Kimura gets behind her and grips X-23’s shoulder with one hand, takes hold of her jaw with the other.

“Nice trick,” Kimura rasps, and breaks her neck.

X-23 falls to the ground. She cannot move. Cannot feel her body. She can only breathe in weak, incomplete puffs. Her eyes grow hot with tears. Kimura kicks open the bathroom door and coughs, then gulps in fresh air. She leans heavily against the doorframe.

X-23 hears her moan, and sees her bend forwards. There is a wet splat on the ground. The bitter smell of vomit in the air. Concussed after all. X-23 feels her head being twisted back around, slowly being pulled into position. Too slowly.

Kimura walks over, a bit unsteadily. She is wiping her mouth with the back of her sleeve. She collapses down onto her rear and lets out a sigh.

“You’re done,” she says. “Hear me? Hello?” She knocks on X-23’s forehead. X-23 can only follow with her eyes. Kimura reaches behind her, just outside the bathroom door, and pulls out some metal contraption X-23 cannot identify.

“See what happens,” she says, unfolding the metal into place, “when you do something stupid like try to leave?”

She takes X-23’s limp hands and fits them in the peculiar restraints. X-23 can only see as far as her peripheral vision allows – she cannot turn her head, cannot speak. Kimura finishes up, then hoists X-23 over her shoulder and climbs to her feet. The position straightens out her neck; she can feel herself start to heal a little faster. Sensation coming back in slow pinpricks. Hanging over Kimura’s back, she can look down at her own arms.

It takes her a second to realize what Kimura has put her in. The restraints are not adamantium – she can tell that much. The Facility does not have adamantium to spare. But they are solid metal, and they hyperflex her wrists so that her fingers nearly brush the bottom of her arm.

X-23 feels ice settle in the pit of her stomach.

Her wrists need to be straight. That is how she is built, that is how her claws are designed to come out. She does not know what would happen if they weren’t; it has always been something she has done on instinct. She does not know enough about her own body to know – if her claws will simply fall out of her hands in this position, without the structure of muscle and bone support that they are built for. If they will come out at all. What would happen to her if she tried.

Her body heals enough that she can breathe a little easier, just enough for her to rumble out, “Kimura.”

“What is it, sweetie?” she murmurs. She walks through the house, wafting smoke out of her face with one hand. The kitchen is destroyed. The safe house. Glass and debris crunch under Kimura’s feet as she walks through the cottage. X-23 hears her open the front door.

There is a sudden click in her neck as something important slots back into place. She can suddenly move her arms; she begins to fight the restraints. They do not give.

“Stop,” she says. Hot tears are falling down her face. She is helpless against Kimura, against the words that come out of her own mouth. “I don’t want to go back.”

Kimura is walking cheerily down the stairs; each bounce is agony on X-23’s still-knitting-together spine.

“I want,” Kimura parrots, “I don’t want.” X-23 tries to release her claws; the signal doesn’t go through, the muscles do not respond. The ones in her feet shoot out well enough, if a little asynchronously. But her arms cannot do what she needs them to.

Kimura is walking across the grass now. “You’re property, X. You think a car wants to drive? No. It just does. Because that’s what the people that own it made it for.”

Kimura’s grip on her tightens a little as her strength starts coming back; she starts to squirm, kick over Kimura’s shoulder. Everything is happening too fast. She is losing, has lost, and it is too soon. There should have been more time. She cannot go back this soon, not when – there is –

“So,” Kimura says brightly, “you wanna pick how Kinney dies? Or should I?”

X-23 freezes. Her blood is rushing in her ears. If Dr. Kinney dies, there is no one. No one at all. Nothing. She cannot think of what to say. The silence stretches out into what feels like minutes. Hours. Her spine stitches itself together.

“Or better yet,” Kimura continues, and her tone makes the hairs on X-23’s neck stand up. “Maybe we get the trigger scent out of storage. You can do it yourself.”

It feels like all the air has left her lungs. And then X-23 is screaming, _screaming_ , thrashing against Kimura with all the strength she has, clawing uselessly at her skin.

“ _No!_ ” she screams, fighting so violently she frees herself from Kimura’s hold and falls to the ground at her feet. “ _No!_ ” and then she is not even making words, only shrieking, gnashing her teeth and howling like an animal. Kimura kicks her under the chin, clamping her jaw shut. X-23 is stunned for just a moment, just long enough for Kimura to throw her into the back of the truck.

There is a pole in the middle of the container, and two huge metal boots attached to it. Kimura locks X-23’s feet in them; the things close around her extended claws and leave a buffer of space so that she cannot cut anything. Neutralized. She sits up and hits the pole wildly with her bound wrists.

There is an intercom in the back wall. It crackles to life and then the driver’s voice says, “Secure?”

X-23 goes abruptly silent. She turns and looks at Kimura, whose mouth is curved into a quiet, pleased smile.

“Kimura,” she says, and it is like drowning. “Stop. Leave Dr. Kinney. I will go with you.” Her voice cracks. “Please.”

Kimura’s smile widens until X-23 can see all of her teeth.

“Oh, X,” she says. “Of _course_ you’re coming with me.”

She takes X-23’s right thumb in her hand and then _twists_ until it tears off in a spray of blood and sinew. She puts it in her pocket and presses the intercom without looking away from X-23’s face.

“Secure. Go without me,” she says. “But send another car. For two.”

X-23 calls her name as Kimura shuts the door behind her.

The truck starts to move. X-23 is suddenly more afraid than she has ever been in her life; there has never been this much at stake. There has never been this much.

She closes her eyes, concentrates inwards. Tries to narrow her world down to her forearms. Focuses in on the structures within. Her sensei had taught her to meditate, to focus on the inner workings of her body, before she killed him like they will make her kill –

X-23 concentrates. She concentrates, and then she _pushes._ At first there is nothing. She growls, willing it, willing her body on. And then her claws, stirred into movement from a position they should not move in, start to slide reluctantly forward.

It goes smoothly for the first little while, until they reach the bend in her wrist. X-23 grits her teeth. _Go._

It is the slowest she has ever let them out. She is fighting every natural reflex her body has; they come forward in fits and starts, pushing into muscle that should not be there, tearing through in a slow, agonizing push. There are nerves and vessels that should be straightened out of their way. The claws scrape their way against them, and she fights every instinct she has to keep forcing them out. Parts of X-23’s hands go numb when the nerves are cut, others sear with burning pain. Tendons snap in half and bulge under her skin; her wrists fall limply even further forward, untethered. A vein bursts like a balloon.

X-23 strains and sweats, lets out a sound that grows louder and louder until she is nearly roaring with exertion. When the claws pop out of her wrists, blood spurts out bright and red where arteries have severed. They cannot heal. Her hands cannot reform in this position, so she keeps bleeding, pouring out onto the floor of the truck. Her skin is beginning to blacken where blood pools underneath it. She hears her carpal bones splinter and crack.

It takes a moment longer, and then they are out. She tests them with the boots; the drag of her claws against her mutilated wrists is red-hot pain, but they stay in place. And they cut.

And then she is free.

She barely registers cutting through the wall, killing the driver. Getting out of the truck. She is still bleeding, but her hands are mangled and ruined; even her thumb has grown back not in quite the right position. She needs to retract her claws entirely, cut her hands off at the wrist, and grow them back correctly for them to heal. But there is not enough time.

She runs towards the house.

***

Sarah is waiting. She is too afraid to look anywhere but the wall in front of her. The only sound she hears is the pounding of her heart. She does not know what happened upstairs, does not know if they have won or lost. Time has lost meaning. She could have been waiting here for minutes, could have been hours.

Kimura comes down the stairs. Walks over to the panic room. The door beeps open without a code being entered – the biometric lock – and Sarah’s heart explodes, she is sure that it does, it cannot keep this frantic pace for so long and not collapse.

Kimura steps inside. Her boots are loud on the white floor. The curtain inside is drawn, the pantry entirely bare. Kimura steps further in. She takes slow steps. Easy steps.

“Game over, Dr. Kinney,” Kimura says, and pulls the curtain open to an empty bed.

She turns around.

And sees Sarah slam the door shut.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please comment if you enjoyed :)


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